Charlie Chaplin would have turned 131 years old!
Charlie Chaplin – a genius of cinema and an outstanding person of the 20th century. His creative legacy is rich, and his life was full of elevations and depressions. Charles Spenser Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889 in London in a family of music hall actors.
Charles’s father died early. Her mother’s acting career failed, and in order to subsist Charlie and his half-brother, Sidney, she had to work as a seamstress and nurse. For the first time, Charlie Chaplin appeared on the stage being still a child, when one day in a variety show he replaced his mother who strained her voice and performed songs from her repertoire.
At the age of nine, he was already performing in suburban music halls of London as part of a children’s dance group The Eight Lancashire Lads. After Chaplin left the ensemble, he changed many professions. He was a newspaper seller, a delivery boy, a servant in a private house, a printer in a printing house, continuing to perform songs, dances, parodies.
At the age of fourteen, he made his stage debut at the Duke of York’s Theatre as Billy bellboy in the Sherlock Holmes play. In 1906, he performed in a number of young comedians in Casey’s Circus. In 1907, he joined Fred Carno’ Pantomime Company, where he sang, danced, juggled, and performed acrobatic routines.
He made his debut in the film Making a Living (1914), where he played the arrogant dandy Chez. Which costume later became an integral part of the famous Tramp Charlie, appeared in the same year during the filming of Mabel’s Strange Predicament mini movie. The actor had picked up the peculiar gait from one of the grooms, nicknamed Weirdo Binks, still in London. For the first time in the image of a Tramp, Charlie Chaplin appeared before the audience in the comedy short film Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914).
His thirteenth film Caught in the Rain (1914) Chaplin shot himself according to his own script. From that moment, the actor was the director and screenwriter of all the films with his participation. In 1915, Chaplin made 12 films for the Chicago Essanay Studios, among them Champion, Tramp, Woman, Evening in the Music Hall had the great success.
In 1931, Chaplin directed his first sound film, City Lights: A Comedy Romance in Pantomime. However, after introducing sound and music into the picture, he abandoned backstage speech. In 1936, he made the Comedy Modern Times with Paulette Goddard in the title role. In 1940, the satirical film The Great Dictator came out, where Chaplin played two roles at once – a modest Jewish Barber Charlie and the fascist dictator Hinkel, who was easily recognized as Hitler. During the Second World War, the actor wrote anti-fascist articles, spoke to soldiers going up the line.
Chaplin is the author of the autobiographical books My Trip Abroad (1922), A Comedian Sees the World (1933), My Autobiography (1964), and My Life in Pictures (1974). The actor was also a successful composer, creating soundtracks for his films, and also became the author of several popular songs, such as Sing a Song, With You Dear in Bombay, There’s Always One You Can’t Forget, Smile, Eternally and You Are My Song. Chaplin was an Honorary Doctor of Oxford (1962) and Durham University (1963), Knight of the Legion of Honor (1971).
In 1971, Chaplin was awarded a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1972 he received the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, as well as the Academy Award “for outstanding contribution to the transformation of cinema into art”. In 1975, he was knighted in the United Kingdom.
Charlie Chaplin died on the night of December 25, 1977 at the age of 88. He was buried in the cemetery of Anglican Church in Corsier-sur-Vevey. In total, Chaplin had 11 children. His sons Charlie Chaplin Jr. (1925-1968) and Sidney Chaplin (1926-2009) were actors. Chaplin’s grandsons – Dolores, Carmen and Kira Chaplin, as well as James and Aurelia Thierry continued the acting dynasty.
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